They Were Here First
by Neko-Chan in Wonderland
Summary: [Oneshot] Haruhi meets the last person she ever wanted to see at the mall. Suoh Tamaki will make this trip slightly more chaotic than others. A day of 'firsts'.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Ouran Host Club and the song "Hide and Seek" belongs to Imogen Heap.

**A/N:** This story is dedicated to my awesome, uber pwnsomefriend, -Kristine X3-, aka, Kristine because she summarized the most recent ten chapters of Host Club for me and because she's just all around awesome. Inspired by her request for a "mall story" and the song "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap.

xXx

_spin me round again_

_and rub my eyes,_

_this can't be happening_

_when busy streets a mess with people_

_would stop to hold their heads - heavy_

xXx

_"Hey Tamaki, do you remember this place?" Haruhi asked Tamaki as they stepped off a train._

_"Yeah... this is where we were first, isn't it?"_

xXx

Haruhi twitched. Every vein in her body twitched. She was actually paralyzed with anger.

"_What are you doing here??"_ She practically growled as she realized that the one person who could take any situation and make it chaos had successfully sabotaged her relaxing day at the mall.

"I wanted to see a commoners' shopping mall!!" Tamaki grinned, blissfully oblivious to the fact that Haruhi looked as if she was going to burst into flames in any minute.

Haruhi decided this was all a bad dream, so she, without hesitation, turned heel and walked pointedly away from Tamaki as if she hadn't even seen him in the first place. You would think a person could take such a simple hint, but Tamaki took every hint and twisted it into his own fantastical meaning.

Yes. To her horror, he followed. "Haruhi, are you clothes shopping?"

Haruhi gave a noncommittal grunt.

"Ah, I see, I see!! In that case, I'll join you!!"

The very words Haruhi and been dreading while knowing it was inevitable.

"_Haruhi!! Try this on for Daddy, won't you??_" Tamaki waved a particularly lacy cute dress in a color none other than powder pink.

"Senpai, please refrain from playing house in public. It's quite aggravating." Haruhi said coldly, turning to examine some jeans.

"Haruhi!! Call me Tamaki-kun when we're not at school. _Tamaki-kun_." Tamaki insisted, following her like a puppy, (and two bodyguards followed a few steps behind Tamaki).

"My father told me never to talk to weird strangers in the mall. I'd better go before I get molested." Haruhi once again turned her back on Tamaki, who looked close to tears as Haruhi's blizzard of a cold shoulder enveloped him.

After going back and forth in that manner for a few stores, Haruhi passed the food court, and noticed Tamaki giving watery-eyed glances towards the shops. She felt a tug on her shirt. A frosted glare greeted Tamaki as she turned around.

"Uh… Haruhi… I'm hungry… how do I… order food?"

There was a long, chilling silence before Haruhi sighed and gave in, ordering the nastiest thing on the menu from the most unhealthy looking fast food joint.

To her disappointment, yet, not surprising in the least, Tamaki enjoyed the food wholeheartedly. She sat across from him with a rather nasty glower, watching him chomp it down.

He paused between bites and random French exclamations to blink at her.

"What?" she asked in her best death-threat-voice.

"Eh, nothing… I was just wondering… why are you still here?" Haruhi raised her eyebrows and he continued, bending and straightening the straw of his drink uncertainly. "I mean… you seem kind of mad at me… I thought you'd leave me here."

Haruhi, who had been previously watching his straw exercises, looked at him with a blank expression. Mentally, she was hitting herself over the head with a large and heavy hammer screaming to get off her butt and ditch him already. But her physical body remained paralyzed on the spot as she continued to give him a blank stare that was making him slightly teary-eyed again.

"I suppose if I leave you alone here, you will probably hurt yourself or the people around you." She said stubbornly, arms crossed.

Tamaki smiled as if he knew something Haruhi didn't.

"What?" Haruhi leaned back.

"Well it's just…" He blushed. "It's like… we're on a date." He continued to smile sheepishly.

Haruhi blinked, and then abruptly got up, an instant blizzard rolling in. "_That's it. I'm leaving._"

"N-No! I mean strictly a father-daughter bonding date!!" Tamaki cried, grabbing her hand before she could escape.

She sat back down and shook her head. "When are you going to grow out of that father-daughter charade?" She felt unusually pissed. Not that she wasn't already pissed, but now she was more pissed than before. For some reason, the whole father-daughter thing… _really irritated her_.

A moment passed in silence, before Haruhi cleared her throat. "Senpai… why are you still holding my hand?" She asked bluntly, without so much as a hint of a blush in such a romantic cliché.

Tamaki glanced at it but didn't let go. "I just… don't want you to leave…" He said quietly, before taking a noisy slurp of his soda.

Haruhi gave a noise of irritation, before pulling her hand firmly out of his grasp. "I'm not going anywhere."

An uncomfortable silence passed between them, and Haruhi felt oddly as if she'd said something rather embarrassing, even though she hadn't. She kept her face by breaking eye contact and temporarily indulging in some good old people watching.

"Haruhi!" Tamaki exclaimed as he stood.

"Nn?" Haruhi got up as well, gathering her shopping bags and following him, a bit too spaced out to really notice where she was being led.

Her awareness returned just seconds too late, and before she knew it… she had been pulled into a photo booth.

"Ahhh this is what the commoners call "Print Club", right??" Tamaki squealed, examining the screen and camera with childish delight.

Haruhi twitched. "Yes."

"_Picture time!!_" How it happened, Haruhi is still trying to figure out, but before she knew it, she was staring blankly at the camera as Tamaki made different weird faces with every flash. Finally, Tamaki realized her lack of expression, and grabbed her, pulling her unwillingly onto his lap.

"Senpai—what—??" She cried but before she knew it, she was bursting with peals of laughter, Tamaki having attacked her stomach with his nimble fingers. "S-Stop it—" She squealed in a very un-Haruhi-like manner between giggles. "Ahh—stop it! Stop it, Tamaki!!"

He did. The two of them stopped and stared at each other, pressed close in the cramped space of the photo booth.

"You called me Tamaki…" Tamaki's violet eyes bore into her with surprise.

"S-Slip of the tongue…" Haruhi muttered, suddenly feeling very suffocated. "The pictures are printing, come on…" She pulled away from his embrace (although she pointedly avoided using that word in her thoughts of the situation) and emerged from the booth looking more blank-faced than ever. Tamaki followed, sporting a rather dark blush. The bodyguards who had been standing in waiting outside the booth watched them with puzzled expressions, knowing only what they had heard coming through the thick curtain. (They had to struggle to wipe their minds clean of any such "unclean" thoughts.)

Two strips of photos slid out of the machine, each a strip of the same moments they shared. The first few were of Haruhi staring blankly at the camera and Tamaki being Tamaki. Then there was one of Haruhi looking shocked as Tamaki pulled her to him, and then a few of them both laughing uncontrollably in each others arms. The last one…

Haruhi blushed and stowed the photos safely into her pockets. She'd rather avoid looking at the last picture.

The day passed rather uneventfully otherwise. The two seemed quite good at pretending nothing had happened. Haruhi was actually quite doubtful anything did happen, yet for some reason it just _felt_ like something did.

Finally the day came to an end, yet Tamaki insisted on accompanying the absolutely exhausted Haruhi home. (Really, he wanted an excuse to ride the public trains and busses.) The two boarded the train, and Haruhi made sure to tell Tamaki their stop repeatedly in case she got distracted (namely by his idiocy) and the two sat side-by-side on the train gazing silently out the dark windows.

"Ah—Haruhi, look!!" Tamaki exclaimed as they crossed a bridge that overlooked the sparkling city. He turned to the unresponsive Haruhi to see her sitting with her head leaning against the window, asleep. The bright lights reflected gently on her soft features, a distinct serenity falling over the empty train. Tamaki now noticed that he was the only one of the few passengers who was still awake, as if a spell was cast over them.

The sound of the train against its tracks seemed to fade as he reached over and brushed the hair out of her eyes. The urge overtook him before he could think, and he leaned over, quite slowly, rather hesitantly, and pressed his lips against hers.

"Tamaki…?" Her eyes opened and the spell was broken. The rush of the train became deafening and the city disappeared as they sped into a tunnel. A loud slap resounded through the train, waking the others accompanying them.

"_What the hell are you doing??_" Haruhi yelled, jumping up and away from him.

"Haruhi… I'm sorry…" Tamaki looked rejected and ashamed of himself. "I shouldn't have done something so impure to my daughter…" He said weakly.

"There you go again! Daughter, daughter, daughter!!" Her face was an appropriate shade of crimson, outshined only by Tamaki's own blush. "I'm not your daughter, god damn it!! I'm so sick of you rich bastards!! You throw around your words to all kinds of women while I watch and you have the _audacity_ to kiss me? It may mean nothing to you, but—"

The train screeched to a stop and both of them lurched forward, Tamaki catching himself on the seats and Haruhi going sprawling onto the train floor. The other passengers on the train were now watching with bewilderment at the arguing couple. Haruhi gave him one last incensed glare before storming off the train and through the station.

Tamaki stared a moment before also running out the train and after her. The two ran for a while, Haruhi in a full-speed sprint, but Tamaki easily gained on her. "Haruhi! _You're_ the one who's impossible. _You're_ the one who doesn't understand us at all!!" Haruhi kept running and Tamaki continued to follow. "It may not have meant anything to you, but regardless of what I've ever said to any one else, _that was still my first kiss!!_" Tamaki called out and Haruhi stopped abruptly. Tamaki reached her and stopped as well.

Haruhi spoke as if through gritted teeth, without turning around. "Then why waste it on me?"

Tamaki grabbed her arm and spun her around, pulling her into a hug. "Because… you're the only who's worth it. I… love you."

"Liar."

Tamaki gripped her tighter. "_I'm not lying!_" And to prove it, he lifted her face and placed a rough, forceful, almost possessive kiss on her lips. All of Haruhi's struggling ceased and her arms fell limply to her sides. She didn't know when, but at some point, on that cold empty train stop, her eyes had slid to a close. The winter air rushed around them for that brief instance, but Tamaki pulled away from the kiss while Haruhi's eyes were still closed. She opened them and stared up at him.

Tamaki's face was flushed, and Haruhi noticed her own felt warmer than it should have in the chilling air. "Um… this isn't the stop we were supposed to get off at, is it?" He mumbled, looking down.

Haruhi took a step closer. "No, it isn't." Without another word or thought she grabbed his jacket collar and pulled him back onto her lips.

xXx

That Monday, Haruhi sat before the Host Club was opened, reading a book. Having already been dressed in her appropriate cosplay outfit of the day, Haruhi waited, as the others got ready. She peeked over her book to see Tamaki fussing over his hair. A small, amused smile lit her features.

"Reading, are we?" Kyoya looked down at her with a smirk.

She blushed ever so slightly and faced him. "Yes. Hamlet, if you must know." She said unaffectedly. As she waved the book for him to see, her bookmark slid to the ground. She made a dive for it, but Kyoya was quicker.

"What's this?" His smirk grew even wider. This time Haruhi actually blushed.

In his hands, he held her "bookmark". It was the strip of photos. The first few of her stoic face and his idiotic ones, the one of her surprised to be pulled into his lap, and a few more of them both laughing. And finally his eyes rested on the last one—the two of them gazing intensely into each other's eyes, nose-to-nose, looking unmistakably like a couple just before a kiss.

xXx

_"Yeah... This is where we were first, isn't it?" Tamaki took Haruhi's hand and pulled her close._

_In return, Haruhi pulled him by his jacket collar and into a kiss._

xXx

_hide and seek_

_trains and sewing machines_

_all those years_

_they were here first_


End file.
